Endorsement is a popular marketing communications tool that has been used by marketers for many years. However, traditional methods of marketing are now being surpassed as sophisticated consumers become more cynical and seek out unofficial, noncommercial information about brands. Due to the advent of technology, consumers are able to communicate independently via the internet in order to seek out, and provide, their own endorsements for products and brands. This study differentiates between different forms of dependent (paid-for) endorsements and independent (non-paid-for) endorsements; namely regular consumer endorsements, expert endorsements and association endorsements, and investigates their relative effects on brand trust. In addition, this study introduces a new form of endorsement, namely implied independent association endorsement, and tests its effect on brand trust. First, a conceptual framework of the structure of the relationship between endorsements and brand trust was compiled from relative endorsement literature. The study then investigated these relationships amongst South African nutritional supplement users who make use of the Internet to gather product information. The study made use of an Internetbased experimental research design. The study divided subjects into two experimental groups and one control group. The effect of each form of endorsement on brand trust was tested comparatively between the groups. The measurement instrument used to measure brand trust was an adapted version of the brand trust scale (BTS) designed by Delgado-Ballester (2004:573-592). Three one-way between-groups ANOVAs were conducted to compare the variability of brand trust scores between the different experimental groups. The covariate brand familiarity was included to account for previous experience with the brand used in the experiment. One-way between-groups ANCOVA’s were used to control the potential confounding that the covariate brand familiarity had on each dependent variable. The results indicate that neither dependent nor independent regular consumer endorsements have an affect on brand trust scores. However, whilst independent expert and independent association endorsements do significantly influence brand trust scores, dependent expert and dependent (implied independent) association endorsements do not. Finally, it was found that independent endorsements have a greater affect on brand trust scores than dependent (implied independent) endorsements in the association endorsement category. The first implication for managers is that different forms of endorsement influence brand trust differently, therefore, managers should be able to distinguish between different forms of endorsement available to them to use in their marketing communications mix. Secondly, managers should start investigating methods of monitoring or influencing independent expert and association endorsements to benefit from their positive influence on brand trust, which in turn has a positive affect on brand equity, consumer loyalty, brand extension acceptance and retailer re-purchases decisions. Copyright / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Marketing Management / MCom / Unrestricted

Orientador : Eduardo Roberto Junqueira Guimarães / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-27T17:45:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Borges_FabianaClaudiaViana_D.pdf: 3930536 bytes, checksum: 7f563cdbcc7e1a52da45d0a63e376a96 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / O espaço urbano, com tudo que o constitui, é um lugar da interpretação, em que os sentidos sobre o social podem ser capturados. Os sujeitos constituídos neste espaço se deparam com a obrigatoriedade de responder a formulários para os diferentes fins em situações distintas. Assim, o interesse desta pesquisa é investigar como os processos de identificação se dão na relação do sujeito do espaço urbano com o funcionamento dos formulários, considerando que a identidade não é fixa, mas construída pela enunciação e que sofre regularidades impostas pelas instituições as quais a define. Partindo desse pressuposto, este trabalho tem por objetivo refletir sobre a constituição do sujeito nos/pelos formulários e como a relação com o simbólico e o institucional faz significar, identificar e classificar os requerentes e entrevistados. Para isso, serão apresentadas análises semântico-enunciativas de formulários oficiais do Estado, utilizados para os mais diversos fins, emissão de RG, CPF, Título de Eleitor e Passaporte, emissão de Certidão de Antecedentes Criminais e formulário para a coleta de dados do Censo Demográfico de 2000, análises essas que apresentam os Domínios Semânticos de Determinação de palavras funcionando nos formulários e suas relações no texto, seja por relação de articulação, relação semântica de contiguidade, ou por reescrita, relação de redizer. A escolha desses formulários se deu de modo aleatório, por buscas na internet e o formulário do Censo Demográfico interessa-nos, sobretudo, por ter sido corpus de pesquisa no Mestrado. A posição que embasa nossos estudos é a da Semântica do Acontecimento. Segundo Eduardo Guimarães, os estudos da significação perpassam o espaço da estrutura e é atravessado pela história e pelo político. Os resultados apontam que as imagens produzidas pelos formulários, a partir dos processos de identificação, orientam as práticas no espaço urbano; apontam, ainda, que pelo funcionamento dos formulários tem-se um controle da memória, pela imagem, numa relação do sujeito com a história / Abstract: The urban space and all that its constitutes allows interpretation in which the senses of the social can be captured. The individuals present in this space are faced with the mandatoriness to answer forms for different purposes in distinctive ways. Hence, the aim of this research is to investigate how the identification process occurs in the relation between these individuals - of the urban space - and the forms functionality, considering that the identity is not unchangeable but built by enunciation and that it undergoes regularities imposed by the institutions which defines it. Based on this assumption, this study is keen on critically analise the formation of the individuals as a result of these forms and how the relation with the symbolic and institutional engender to mean, identify and classify both surveyor and surveyed individuals. For so, semantic-enunciative analysis of State oficial forms are presented, used for many purposes such as emissions forms of identity card, CPF, electoral registration, passport, criminal record and form for data colletion of Censo Demografico 2000. Such analysis contains the Semantic Domains of Determination of words running on forms and its in-text relations, whether by relation of articulation , semantic contiguity relation or by rewriting, relation of re-telling. The choice of these forms were random by internet searching, and the form of Censo Demografico, interest us, mainly due to the fact it was corpus research at Masters. The theory that backs up our studies is "The semantic of happening", being the forerunner Eduardo Guimaraes, for who the meaning studies reach far beyond the structure space and is crossed by History, ideology and for the political. The results demonstrates that social images produced by forms, from the identification forms, orientates the practices in the urban space. Moreover, that by the usage of forms it i possible to have a memory control through image in a relation of the individual with the History / Doutorado / Linguistica / Doutora em Linguística

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(社会健康医学) / 甲第18466号 / 社医博第56号 / 新制||社医||8(附属図書館) / 31344 / 京都大学大学院医学研究科社会健康医学系専攻 / (主査)教授 木原 正博, 教授 中山 健夫, 教授 川村 孝 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Public Health / Kyoto University / DFAM

In a 2005 paper, Yang constructed families of Hilbert Eisenstein series, which when restricted to the diagonal are conjecturedto span the underlying space of elliptic modular forms. Oneapproach to these conjectures is to show the non-vanishing of an innerproduct of elliptic eigenforms with the restrictions of Eisensteinseries. In this paper, we compute this inner product locally by usingexplicit values of new vectors in the Waldspurger model.

Although many people choose to sign consent forms and participate in research, how many thoroughly read a consent form before signing it? Across 3 experiments using 348 undergraduate student participants, we examined whether personality characteristics as well as consent form content, format, and delivery method were related to thorough reading. Students repeatedly failed to read the consent forms, although small effects were found favoring electronic delivery methods and traditional format forms. Potential explanations are discussed and include participant apathy, participants trying to save time by not reading the consent form, and participant assumptions about consent forms.

Bureaucracy is being seriously challenged today by other organizational designs because its rigidity is being viewed as a detriment to organizational survival in the hypercompetitive marketplace of global business. Standardization, homogeneity, and hierarchy are not conducive to meeting the changing demands of a turbulent business environment. As a result, new organization forms based on flexibility and adaptibility are gaining prominence in the business literature and in managerial practice. The purpose of this study was to provide an empirically-based examination of how employees are responding to these new organization forms. Three hypotheses were generated concerning the impact of the new organization forms on employee alienation, and the role of ideology as a moderating variable between the new organization forms and alienation. I predicted that employees working in new organization forms with an orientation toward communitarianism would be more alienated than employees who were more inclined toward the ideology of individualism. While my hypotheses were not supported, hindsight suggests an alternative hypothesis for further study: Employees with differing ideological dispositions can both prosper in the postindustrial workplace as long as elements of the traditional economic compact are in place. / Ph. D.

I argue the science of medicine and medical analogy in Plato provides the grounds for Plato’s formulation of his metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, and ethics. The metaphysics of the Forms, as known by the argument from the sciences, can be derived from medical analogy when accompanied by knowledge of ancient Greek medicine. Plato’s realism regarding non-spatiotemporal objects and his understanding of them as explanations for identities, functions, and ends are thoughts obtainable to one who reflects on the contemporaneous science of medicine. Similarly, Plato’s psychology, namely his parts of the soul doctrine, psychological egoism, and nonrationalism, can all be explained economically by light of medical analogy. Thus, if one traces the motivation for these arguments in medical analogy back to their source in the science of medicine, one gets the result that Plato’s big ideas stand on the science of medicine as his intellectual forbearer. Plato, just like the rest of us, thinks by means of the technologies of his day. This situates Plato’s philosophy in the technologies and sciences that surround him in a way previously unexplored.

Early reformers reasoned that by changing institutional structure in local government you could solve organizational problems. Institutional structural reform in local government has interested scholars ever since. The reform movement in the early 20th century firmly established the council-manager (administrative) model of government, which along with the mayor-council (political) model, is now utilized in 92% of all U.S. municipalities. Recent scholars have observed and reported on the fact that, increasingly, mayor-council municipalities are adopting structural changes that resemble characteristics found in council-manager municipalities and vice-versa. This research seeks to examine the question of whether these structural changes have any effect on these local governments by examining the behavior of Chief Administrative Officer’s (CAO) and municipal outputs. The author examines a representative sample of 266 administrative and political municipalities within the U.S. having a population between 10,000 and 250,000. The institutional structures of these 266 municipalities are measured for political model and administrative model characteristics using three separate independent variables. The effects of institutional structural change is measured using group mean T-tests, ANOVA analysis, and multiple regression for per capita expenditures, working time allocation between the management, policy, and political role activities for the CAO, the quality of services provided, and the involvement level of the CAO compared to the council in the mission, policy, administrative, and management dimensions of municipal responsibilities. The study findings are mixed; significant effects are found in some but not all variables. Changing local government structures from characteristics found in the political model to characteristics found in the administrative model: makes no difference in municipal expenditures; makes a difference in how a CAO allocates his time in management and political activities but not policy activities; makes a difference in how the CAO perceives quality of services; makes a difference in the level of involvement for the CAO in the policy, administrative, and management dimensions of responsibility but not the mission dimension. Overall, this study has found that, by using more complex methods to measure institutional structure change, changes in institutional structures do make a difference in important areas of CAO behavior and outputs in local governments.

The Harris-Venkatesh conjecture posits a relationship between the action of derived Hecke operators on weight-one modular forms and Stark units. We prove the full Harris-Venkatesh conjecture for all CM dihedral weight-one modular forms. This reproves results of Darmon-Harris-Rotger-Venkatesh, extends their work to the adelic setting, and removes all assumptions on primality and ramification from the imaginary dihedral case of the Harris-Venkatesh conjecture. This is done by introducing the Harris-Venkatesh period on cuspidal one-forms on modular curves, introducing two-variable optimal modular forms, evaluating GL(2) × GL(2) Rankin-Selberg convolutions on optimal forms and newforms, and proving a modulo-ℓᵗ comparison theorem between the Harris-Venkatesh and Rankin-Selberg periods. Furthermore, these methods explicitly describe local factors appearing in the constant of proportionality prescribed by the Harris-Venkatesh conjecture. We also look at the application of our methods to non-dihedral forms.

The aim of this work is to introduce differential forms on Euclidean space. The theory of differential forms provides a way of abstracting integration by formalising differentials over which an integral can be taken. The work builds towards Stokes’ Theorem for which a proof is given. Finally, using Stokes’ Theorem, three famous integral theorems from vector analysis are derived.